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 The Lycaeum Forums » Psychedelics & Non Visionary Related » Visionary Chemicals (Moderator: 2a)Topic:
 What do you die of when you scientifically die of e.g MDMA?

[pylkko]

Okay here goes: in this case the girl lost a liver because she used MDMA. The article mentions several refs too: "a number of complications following repeated use of the drug have been reported. These complications have included disseminated intravascular
coagulation [6], rhabdomyolysis [11], acute renal failure [5], and even death [2]. It has been recently observed that the repeated use of ecstasy can cause hepatic damage [8, 9]."

How do these people manage to consume pure MDMA and have shit like liver failure? Notice that it even is impossible to make a pill out of MDMA only.


http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/mdma/references/journal/1997_brauer_transplant_1/1997_brauer_transplant_1_text.pdf

[biosearch]

Interesting. In all the cases that required liver transplantation there was a rise in billirubin and encephalopathy. I would suspect that it is not the MDMA but the contaminants that either where not removed or aldultarants. Even 120 mg per 45 to 50 kg body weight would not normaly be that toxic. In its salt it is water soluble and does not cause liver necrosis. indications are that a lethal IV dose for 50% (LD-50) of 150-pound individuals would be about 1100 to 1780 mg. The dangers of such extrapolation are well known, but these figures would seem to indicate that a lethal dose for injected MDMA may be a little over 10 times the usual 100-150 mg amount. Granted, these victims took orall MDMA and the tablets have a binder, even this should not have caused any fatalities.

[2a]

i've heard that "herbal ecstasy" that frequently contains ephedrine can cause kidney damage.

[Newfound_wonder]

Has anyone thought of making a pill using MDMA with some other filler/binder, similar to lortabs containing hydrocodone and acetaminophen, rendering the possibility of overdosing somewhere from difficult to impossible?  Or possibly combine  MDMA with a substance that causes sickness if a person tries to use it multiple times in a week (if such a substance exists, but you get the idea.)

Does this idea seem plausible?  The idea being to make a "fool-proof" ecstacy pill that couldn't be misused.

[2a]

unless you just pulled the MDMA out of the filler to have molly.  nothing is fool proof, for instance when the pharmies added a filler to (I think) oxycontins that made them uninjectable, users just starting pulling the liquid through a cotton ball into the syringe to filter out the filler that would've gotten lodged in their lungs or capillaries.  Everything can be bypassed by people who are interested enough.  And when it comes to getting high, people can be very interested indeed.

anyway, the idea you suggest would most likely be viewed in a positive light as a layer of abuse prevention should MDMA become a prescription drug.

[Psychic Surfer]

Most cases are not studied, nor reported with enough objective rigour to be able to distinguish specific aetiology,
but cases usually boil down to:

Low sodium (hyponatraemia) from over-hydration.

Other causes associated with MDMA, but not directly caused by MDMA (e.g. alcohol and accidents)

Rare idiosyncratic events such as allergies, contaminants, supposed hepatotoxicity (could be to contaminants)


The greatest identified cause is over-hydration, due to governmental fears of "dehydration" in raves, and inappropriate
drinking of excessive water, some famous cases of mortality (eg leah betts in the uk) had drunk many litres.

[pylkko]

Everything can be bypassed by people who are interested enough.  And when it comes to getting high, people can be very interested indeed.

That's not entirely true. Because it is possible to formulate drugs in such manners that their seperation is no longer only a question of motivation, but also require nanotechnological applicatons or know-how, or just are so expensive that nearly no one will bother anymore...

[pylkko]

Well. If you look at the article and refs, there is no mention of dehydration or too much water, or acohol related accidents.

[biosearch]

Well. If you look at the article and refs, there is no mention of dehydration or too much water, or acohol related accidents.

From the lit:

On day 7 she developed
fulminant hepatic failure with
reduced hepatic coagulation factors
and grade IV encephalopathy. Orthotopic
liver transplantation was
carried out 10 days following the ingestion.
The patient made a full recovery
within 72 h and was released
from the hospital 6 weeks later. Histopathological
examination of the
removed liver revealed a nutritivetoxic
liver necrosis.


Quite right. I suspect that the hepatic toxicity was probably caused by contaminants left behind from the manufacturing process. There are some very nasty chemicals that are used to produce this substance. Sodium Cyano Boro Hydrate for one. Another source could come from the use any adulterants to "cut" the product.

[Psychic Surfer]

http://www.emedicine.com/EMERG/topic927.htm

The instance you quote may be rare specific hepatoxicity, but you cannot extrapolate from individual case reports
to generalisations about risk. Genetic variations in cytochrome p450 and metabolic clearance pathways are sometimes
implicated in instances where toxic metabolites accumulate and cause drug-induced hepatitis, which in this instance
appeared to be a fulminant process, whereby cell death precipated more cell death due to releasing enzymes and inflammatory
mediators.

hyponatraemic cerebral oedema from overhydration is thought to be the commonest cause of mdma death.

[Mens Rea]

Most cases are not studied, nor reported with enough objective rigour to be able to distinguish specific aetiology,
but cases usually boil down to:

Low sodium (hyponatraemia) from over-hydration.

Other causes associated with MDMA, but not directly caused by MDMA (e.g. alcohol and accidents)

Rare idiosyncratic events such as allergies, contaminants, supposed hepatotoxicity (could be to contaminants)


The greatest identified cause is over-hydration, due to governmental fears of "dehydration" in raves, and inappropriate
drinking of excessive water, some famous cases of mortality (eg leah betts in the uk) had drunk many litres.

There's also dehydration and hyperthermia. I'd imagine if you were out in the freezing cold on MDMA you'd die of hypothermia cause of vasoconstriction issues (like those tweakers who froze to death after they got lost out in the freezing snowing winter of some midwestern state.

[pylkko]

"No randomized clinical human studies exist, and one always must be cautious when extrapolating animal study data and applying it to human models. However, studies demonstrate lowered concentrations of the 5-HT metabolite 5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (5-HIAA) in the cerebrospinal fluid of regular MDMA users. This correlates with a similar decrease reported in primates with brain damage induced by MDMA."


That is refering to Ricaurte's work on primates that was shown to be bunk. Look at the references section.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Ricaurte

[Cozmicallicio]

white rabbit -
a cotton ball into the syringe to filter out the filler that would've gotten lodged in their lungs or capillaries.

This has always had that urban myth rumor ring to it to me...like gun bluing and chicken feed.  Is there some real merit to this, with any thing remotely scientific to back it up?

[pylkko]

Of course it is not totally impossible to suffer idiosyncratic allergic reactions to any medicine, drug or excipient. Actually that is a very interesting field of reasearch itself. Many legally used medications like statins or some antibiotics might cause more such phenomena when looked at stastistically, so it's diffcult to understand from any data on ill effects alone anything, that is if it is not compared to some meaningfull context.

some one should do that for shit like MDMA

[Newfound_wonder]

I'm guessing that the effects any serotonin/dopamine agonist depends on the structure of a person's dopamine/serotonin receptors or transporters, as well of the number of these receptors in a person's braincells.  So depending on your genetic code for the 5ht_2A receptor or 5ht transporter gene and the genes/proteins involved in expressing these genes, MDMA may affect one particular allelic variant differently than another variant.  Hopefully we could one day do a simple blood test to get a better idea of how an individual would respond to a particular agonist.

The blood test could allow researchers to sequence every protein that MDMA interacts with and could get a rough idea of the binding efficacy of each protein based on the test information.  It probably couldn't predict variability due to upregulation or downregulation, but it would provide some sort of insight; or at least be able to predict if someone would have a bad reaction to a certain molecule.

[pylkko]

I was thinking more of something based on empiria, that is epidemiology and stastistics in already published data that could be done now by one of us.

[ST1R]

If not u, then who?
If not now, then when?
 

[pylkko]

Okay I promise to do it if somebody help me and it be part of new lyc wiki

[Mystagogue]

maybe you die of being retarded, like actual mental retardation, what pulls their faces back in a bad way...I chiropractically adjust hormones off my forehead, good for anyone, but I hate ecstasy

Has anyone thought of making a pill using MDMA with some other filler/binder, similar to lortabs containing hydrocodone and acetaminophen, rendering the possibility of overdosing somewhere from difficult to impossible?  Or possibly combine  MDMA with a substance that causes sickness if a person tries to use it multiple times in a week (if such a substance exists, but you get the idea.)

Does this idea seem plausible?  The idea being to make a "fool-proof" ecstacy pill that couldn't be misused.

its usually made in holland, and that usually includes such admixtures as a sex wizard chemist's semen and the human flesh oil from dead nazis/junkies/kheads/victims like natalie holloway
people usually don't even get sick from that.
it always contains other poison besides the "molly" anyway.
the solution is to make other drugs to give them, all 50 cent was really sayin g in the song in the club, but then people will go to clubs, and  that encourages ecstasy use, a racist drug.  its a catch 22, just like the beat.  and then there is the dual layer meaning of "find me in the club" as in "do you think i'm in the klan?" (for singing a song an idiot could think was promoting ecstasy, but everyone knew it was a racist drug anyway

[Dr. Suess]

Hopefully those of you seriously wondering how the majority of people may overdose will find this interesting....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serotonin_syndrome

[lovemaster]

unless the material this girl ingested is shown to be pure mdma one can reasonably assume it was absolutely not, probably just dirty meth-van-style garbage

[3lbs]

maybe you die of being retarded, like actual mental retardation

 

[2a]

call me an idiot, but how do they know the MDMA and liver failure are connected at all?  couldn't she have just had an underlying condition that was either the culprit altogether or was merely exacerbated by the "MDMA"? it seems like they're just assuming that because the two seem to coincide together (even though she'd been rolling regularly for two months, probably on different batches, before symptoms appeared) that they must be causally connected.  and because this girl had been using drugs, its a convenient explanation thus leading to them ignoring the true underlying cause.  or have i just been watching way too much House?   

[biosearch]

5H-T, good point. In making MDMA there are several different pathways to do it. Incomplete conversion and seperation and or salting can produce some nasty stuff, i.e. NaBH3(CN) is fairly toxic and HgCl2 is not nice. Who knows what she got. It is not like it was produced under GMP conditions.

[luc]

lol definately too much house.

But you might be right as well.